1st Edition
Husserl and Spatiality A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Spatial description
Chapter 1 Phenomenon and method
Fieldwork as methodological clue
Sensing history
Chapter 2 Corporeity and spatiality
Constitution and experience
Visual space
The spatial phantom and time
Tactual space, motility, and the lived body
Corporeity and time
Chapter 3 Space and the Other
The genesis of space
Empathic spatiality
Generative space
Chapter 4 A phenomenological ethnography of space
The reunião
Epilogue: Umweltlichkeit
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Tao DuFour is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture at Cornell University.
Husserl and Spatiality is a whirlwind expedition through central Husserlian concepts in relation to the central problem of what constitutes a space. As I read about DuFour’s childhood memories, and his descriptions from his rich ethnographic study of the spaces and practices of the Brazilian religion Candomblé, his writing seemed to linger and cling to the walls of my room, building tangible horizons and creating ripples of effect in my understanding also of my own surrounding environment. This book will inspire interpretations of the world that favour empathy over power, bodily engagement over subjective self-centeredness, and historical meaningfulness over relational flatness. It is a much-needed call to reinterpret spatial relationships in ways that allow the past to gently touch the future.
- Henriette Steiner, Associate Professor, Section for Landscape Architecture and Planning, University of Copenhagen
Part radical re-reading of Husserl, part phenomenology of Afro-Brazilian ritual, DuFour’s is an astoundingly original take on space as the constitutive ground of all lived experience. The ethnography of ritual here becomes the litmus test of the deepest stakes of human experience—both condition of possibility and the generative source of human relationships, replete with embodied history and affective significance. This is what DuFour calls environmentality—a tour de force of life-driven conceptual creativity.
- Martin Holbraad, Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of the Department of Anthropology, University College London
